This invention relates to a connector.
Generally, a contacting arrangement of a connector is classified into a stroke type and a butt type.
As an interface connector for a mobile apparatus such as a mobile telephone and a PDA (personal digital assistant), a butt-type contacting arrangement is often used. In a connector utilizing the butt-type contacting arrangement, a signal terminal is required to have a sufficient spring characteristic within a limited space. Therefore, the signal terminal is complicated in shape and a transmission path is increased in length. This results in characteristic impedance mismatching which makes it difficult to adapt the connector to high-speed transmission.
In a high-speed transmission connector, it is ideal that characteristic impedance matching is established uniformly per each signal terminal within the connector. However, due to design limitation, it is difficult to establish such characteristic impedance matching. For example, in a butt-type connector, a spring portion of the signal terminal tends to have a high characteristic impedance because the spring portion can not entirely be surrounded by a dielectric material (insulator). Therefore, it is difficult to match the characteristic impedance as the connector.
Since the characteristic impedance depends upon a sectional area of a transmission path. Therefore, if the sectional area of the transmission path is increased, the characteristic impedance can be lowered. In this case, however, it is difficult to narrow a contact pitch. In addition, it is difficult to set a spring condition providing a sufficient spring characteristic.
Japanese Utility Model Application Publication (JP-U) No. H5-97074 discloses a connector in which a contact spring portion and a terminal portion are fixed to an insulator and, only when the connector is connected to a mating connector, the contact spring portion is pressed by a mating contact to be brought into contact with the terminal portion. In this connector, however, no consideration is made about characteristic impedance matching.